clickbait

UK/ˈklɪkbeɪt/

nounB22 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — click sits at #3,181leans written

Clickbait is a headline written only to make you press it. Pure clickbait, a clickbait headline, don't fall for clickbait.

It works by opening a gap between what you know and what you want to know, and closing it is the only reward — which is why the page so often disappoints. The word is always a criticism. Note that a headline can be accurate and still be clickbait, since the fault is in what it promises rather than in what it says.

Definitions of clickbait

1nounclickbaitA headline written only to make you press it.B2
“Headlines like 'You won't believe what she did next!' are pure clickbait.”
2nounmarketingA headline that promises more than the page gives.B2
“The article promised a miracle cure, but it was just clickbait with nothing new inside.”

Also practised as

nounA headline that promises more than the page gives.

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeyd-
Middle English
bayte
English
bait
English, today
clickbait

From click + -bait. bait comes from Middle English bayte. From Middle English bayte, bait, beite, from Old Norse beita (“food, bait”), from Proto-Germanic baitō (“that which is bitten, bait”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰeyd- (“to cleave, split, separate”). Cognate with German Beize (“mordant, corrosive fluid; marinade”), Old English bāt (“that which can be bitten, food, bait”). Related to bite.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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